The House Jan. 6 hearing on Oct. 13 not only summarized an ironclad case that Donald J. Trump was responsible for the deadly insurrection that day, it added significant new information that further implicated Trump as well as others.
“The vast weight of evidence presented so far has shown us that the central cause of Jan. 6 was one man, Donald Trump, who many others followed,” Republican committee co-chair Liz Cheney said in her opening remarks. “None of this would have happened without him. He was personally and substantially involved in all of it.”
Having made its case, the committee then issued a subpoena for Trump to testify, having made perfectly clear precisely what he has to answer for. By normal standards, the hearings have been a remarkable success, establishing a public factual record that Trump and his backers have done everything imaginable to try to obscure — if not to stand on its head.
But in a larger sense, the hearings have clearly failed, because they have not even tried to do what is necessary: to defeat the ongoing GOP attempt to effectively destroy American democracy.
On the first track, the hearings were a success because of the large number of Republican witnesses who came forward and told the truth, putting their allegiance to democracy over their allegiance to the party. But on the second track, it’s clear that such individuals are an endangered species.
“Our institutions only hold when men and women of good faith make them hold regardless of the political cost,” Cheney said. “We have no guarantee that these men and women will be in place next time. Any future president inclined to attempt what Donald Trump did in 2020 has now learned not to install people who could stand in the way.”
If the Republican Party as it now exists were to regain any power, there would be no such people to stand in the way for longer than it takes to say, “You’re fired!”
In her remarks, Cheney directed attention to three points:
First, as you will see, President Trump had a premeditated plan to declare that the election was fraudulent and stolen before Election Day, before he knew the election results….
Second, please recognize that President Donald Trump was in a unique position, better informed about the absence of widespread election fraud than almost any other American….
Third, please consider today who had a hand in defeating President Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, Vice President Pence, Bill Barr, Jeff Rosen, and others at the Department of Justice, State Republican officials, White House staff who blocked proposals to mobilize the military to seize voting machines and run new elections, our Capitol Police, aided by the Metropolitan Police, other federal law enforcement, and our National Guard, who arrived later in the afternoon.
All of these people had a hand in stopping Donald Trump. This leads us to a key question. Why would Americans assume that our Constitution and our institutions and our republic are invulnerable to another attack? Why would we assume that those institutions will not falter next time?
This last question points to what’s missing: there should have been at least one full hearing devoted to experts on the dangers of failed coups as trial runs for successful ones, how historical examples can and should guide us in taking action to protect democracy, what the specific dangers are (election denialism, voter suppression, excusing violence, etc) and how they can be countered.
This need is particularly urgent as nearly 300 election denialists are running for state and federal offices this year, and their actions, if elected, could allow Trump (or another Republican) to grab power in 2024 despite losing the election. So, if the purpose of the J6 Committee, similar to the 9/11 Commission, was to learn from an attack on our democracy to defend against future ones, this kind of broader perspective seems vitally necessary.
To some extent, the committee was aware of this, according to one such expert, Frederico Finchelstein, author most recently of A Brief History of Fascist Lies, and six other books on fascists and populists. “I was in fact interviewed by investigative counsels with the Jan. 6 Select Committee that were part of a team that examined root causes and long-term implications of the attack,” Finchelstein told Random Lengths. “Their questions were excellent,” he said, and they interviewed other experts as well, such as philosopher Jason Stanley, author of How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, who collaborated with Finchelstein on a joint statement, which he released publicly after we asked to see it.
“As experts on fascism we recognize Trump’s rhetoric to be profoundly anti-democratic,” their statement began. “Specifically, it exemplifies important fascist dimensions, vividly exemplified by its capacity to justify violence against democratic institutions.”
They explain that “for an extremist party to become viable in a democracy, it must present a face it can defend as moderate, and cultivate an ambiguous relationship to the extreme views and statements of its most fanatic members. … In the case of the takeover of the mainstream rightwing party by a fascist-leaning populist anti-democratic movement, the pretense must be stronger and so are the dangers to democracy.”
They go on to note that, “Extremist movements, including fascist and neo-fascist ones, face pressure both to mask their connection to and to cultivate violent racist supporters, as well as its inherently anti-democratic agenda. But at some point, the tension becomes too strong and the party needs to decide whether to follow democracy and the constitution or to gain or remain in power via extraconstitutional means. This was the choice of Donald Trump and his supporters.”
While the GOP as a whole recoiled from the coup attempt immediately afterward, a majority still voted not to accept the election results in Pennsylvania and Arizona — including an overwhelming 70% of House Republicans. Dozens of GOP senators condemned Trump’s actions while simultaneously refusing to impeach him. Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy first denounced the coup attempt, but within weeks went to Mar A Lago to mend fences with Trump.
Ever since, GOP leaders have continued the pre-coup pretense — putting a moderate face on an extremist agenda — in a slightly different key. A wave of election deniers is running for governor or secretary of state — the top election official in most states. There’ve been hundreds, if not thousands of election workers hounded out of their jobs with threats of violence, 42 laws in 21 states have been enacted making voting more difficult, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, and Florida has been terrorizing potential voters with targetted arrests, touted by Gov. Ron DeSantis seeking to raise his profile for a potential presidential bid.
Given how close Trump came to succeeding — as Cheney pointed out — it’s chilling to see how much has changed on the ground. “Of the 27 secretary of state primaries, more than 80 percent (22) featured an Election Denier,” the States United Action reported. “Election Deniers running on a major party ticket have won half (50% or 11/22) of their primary races for secretary of state.”
In Nevada, a majority of county election supervisors (10 of 17) “have already quit, been forced out or announced their departures,” according to a report in the Washington Post, with some being replaced by election deniers, including one of Nevada’s 2020 fake electors. Lower-level works have also been driven out. The GOP candidate for secretary of state, Jim Marchant, has an ad ludicrously claiming “it’s not” possible that Democratic politicians like Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer win elections legitimately, falsely insinuating that George Soros and ballot shenanigans are to blame.
In Arizona, camo-clad “poll-watchers,” some armed, have intimidated early voters using drop-boxes, resulting in referrals to the Department of Justice. This is a sampling of the diverse forms of democratic erosion that Trump Republicans have engaged in since Jan. 6 — a wide range of efforts intended to disrupt and defeat the will of the voters at every level in our democracy.
A truly vigorous investigation of Jan. 6, seeking to prevent a repeat, would seem to require a hearing devoted to exploring and exposing all of this — what is being done, whose rights are being violated, what lies are being told, how it compares with other historical examples, and what the likely outcome will be if nothing is done to stop it.
“I think you’re right in that such hearings are useful not just for educating publics but also to mobilize them, especially regarding possible solutions,” said political scientist Rob Mickey, author of the historical study, Paths Out of Dixie. “Solutions are harder regarding violence. I think on things like voter suppression, it’s not rocket science; we know what to do, as we’ve done it in the past (Reconstruction, the 1960s-70s, etc.). We’ve just decided not to.”
As an afterthought, he noted, “That ‘we’ is too glib; most forces supportive of free and fair elections have been blocked by Republicans.”
But historian Seth Cotlar, who’s working on a history of illiberal conservatism in the U.S., was not so sure. “I’m pretty doubtful that such hearings would have made much of a dent,” Cotlar told Random Lengths. “It appears that large swathes of white voters desperately just want to believe that everything is fine and normal, and there’s not much a bunch of professors or experts can do to convince them otherwise.”
But Mickey is probably right about the target audience. Trump’s base and those willing to go along with it aren’t the ones who need to be reached directly — even in the short run.
In terms of meeting undecided voters where they are, Anand Giridharadas, author of The Persuaders, advised on Twitter, “Don’t talk about the democracy issue as ‘the democracy issue.’ So much data shows it doesn’t work,” he said. “What works is framing democracy as a tool of empowerment that lets people better their lives, fight inflation, get the healthcare they want.”
But those who already get the connection need all the help they can get in organizing to defend democracy.
“January 6 represents a warning sign for the entire world,” Finchelstein and Stanley wrote in their conclusion. “January 6 was a beginning, not an end. Failure to provide accountability for those who initiated it is tantamount to legitimizing it, as well as the slow-motion coup to which it has given birth.
“Protecting democracy requires the dedication of journalists to record and investigate abuses of power, and courage of street protestors to channel this knowledge into action. It requires politicians on the right, center, and left who can clearly and visibly place their allegiance to multi-party democracy over seizing the reins of power in a one-party state. It requires law enforcement and the armed forces to take the side of the constitution. When fascism won in the past, it was when none of these things happened.”
It’s a warning we cannot afford to ignore.